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  • Sledgehammers: Strengths and Flaws of Tiger Tank Battalions in World War II
  • Steven Zaloga
Sledgehammers: Strengths and Flaws of Tiger Tank Battalions in World War II. By Christopher W. Wilbeck. Bedford, Pa.: Aberjona Press, 2004. ISBN 0-9717650-2-2. Tables. Maps. Illustrations. Index. Pp. viii, 264. $19.95.

Although numbering only fourteen battalions in 1944, the Wehrmacht's Tiger tank units have received a disproportionate amount of coverage in popular histories of the war. The Tigers were the heaviest and most powerful tanks of the war, and have proven to be a subject of enduring fascination to military history buffs and hobbyists. At least twenty books on the Tiger tank [End Page 1283] have been published over the past two decades, divided into technical histories of the Tiger's design and accounts of the Tiger battalions in combat. Many of these books were based on extensive archival research, but given their intended audience, they are often detailed compilations woefully short of analysis. Major Christopher Wilbeck, a serving U.S. armor officer, has attempted to mine this mass of secondary sources to provide a new synthesis with a sharper focus on the actual combat effectiveness of the Tiger battalions through the prism of his professional background.

After providing a primer on German armor doctrine and the role of heavy tanks in Wehrmacht tactics, Wilbeck offers a series of concise thumbnail accounts of Tiger battalions in combat from 1943 to 1945. He notes that the Tiger battalions were originally conceived to support offensive breakthrough operations, but that by the time they were deployed in 1943, the Wehrmacht was on the defensive. As a result, the battalions as often as not were used in a defensive antitank role instead of their intended mission, scoring a very high kill ratio against Allied tanks on both the Eastern and Western fronts. Where possible, he examines the intended mission of particular battalions in specific engagements, and assesses whether the battalion was effective in its mission. He concludes by questioning whether the deployment of such expensive and resource-intensive units was a prudent use of scarce resources in the final year of the war.

The book's analyses are sometimes weakened by dependence on secondary sources. Since the author often lacks tangible evidence of the combat performance of the Tigers in roles other than tank-vs.-tank fighting, he relies on Tiger battalion kill claims against Allied tanks to assess their effectiveness. He accepts these at face value, stating that the evidence from British and U.S. sources backs the German claims and that Soviet unit histories lack tank loss data. The small number of instances where Tiger claims against British and American tank units can be verified does not warrant a blanket acceptance of such claims, especially given the widespread tendency of combat units to exaggerate aircraft and tank kills. The author seems unaware that the Wehrmacht's own intelligence service on the Eastern Front, Fremde Heere Ost, regularly discounted German army tank kill claims by thirty to fifty percent. The author's assertion about the lack of Soviet tank loss data is unfortunate as there is no evidence in the book that the author reads Russian, has read many of the Soviet tank unit histories, or has conducted any archival research on Russian issues. The appendix on Allied heavy tank doctrine is weak and unevenly researched.

In spite of these problems, the book is well written, reasonably priced, and offers an insightful professional assessment for military historians unwilling to wade through the extensive but uneven buff literature on tank warfare.

Steven Zaloga
Abingdon, Maryland
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